DCS 2013 in Review Part III: The Ones That Weren’t Meant to be

We started this feature of by discussing the games that made it out in 2013, then we looked at 4 games that missed their release dates and now this week we look at the remaining 4. Another important thing to note about Part 3, with the exception of Pier Solar, DCS was positive none of these games would actually release last year or any time in the near future; hence this weeks list is arranged alphabetically rather than in order of release.

Dynamite Dreams is a bomber man inspired, 4 player, action-puzzle game designed by French developers Julien Desquenne (aka Patbier) and Nicolas Pochet (aka Poche) with musical contributions by Philippe Vendi. The game was originally conceived as a mini game for Alice Dreams (another story for another time). The stand alone game was revealed on June 2006 as an entry for an indie coding contest known as Dream On 3 (One of the sponsors for the contest were Goat Store Publishing).

Since then the game has been in attendance every year at Retro Game Connexion (a convention in France), where the game is not only playable but is usually seen as an entry in the gaming contest. RGC attendees include Sega developer and creator of Alone in the Dark; Frédérick Raynal.

In late 2007, Patbier posted a trailer for the game on YouTube indicating the game was due in 2008. The trailer even managed to get the attention of G4, and it briefly made it on American TV. The trailer revealed features that elevated the game to indie level from homebrew, it was no longer perceived as a Bomberman clone with various multiplayer modes, including one that utilized the VMU. The game also boasted an impressive story mode featuring fully animated cutscenes. The tentative release date for the game was 2008.

The game continues to be a presence at game conventions and occasionally makes it on French televison, however a definitive release date appeared to be nowhere in site. Since Q4 2012, the games status is 90% complete. In the past year alone Several convention, gameplay and tutorial videos have been uploaded on Poche’s YouTube channel, the game certainly looks much better than the 2007 trailer.

We reached out to Patbier to discuss why the game did not make it out in 2013. To which he simply responded my “real” job got in the way.

While the community is certainly eager to get their hands on Dynamite Dreams and when it does eventually come out it will rival Sturmwind in terms of quality and scope, however no body in the community can exactly throw a fit or shout foul as the developers have never formally given a release date, opened pre-orders or even finalized a publishing deal.

Just like Hypertension and Scourge, This is our first post acknowledging Dynamite Dreams. At DCS (WordPress) we do not really talk projects until we know for a fact that an indie project isn’t vaporware. So for more information check out the games official Facebook.

In many ways DCS regards Hucast as DC:Dev.Team. When most critics talk Dux they tend to compare it to classic shm’ups; games that sceners may not be familiar with. Personally Dux reminds me off Last Hope only with slick high res visuals and an art style that really makes us question whether the visuals are eye candy or just candy. Hence it was no surprise to us that Hucast’s next game was Dux 1.5, after all NG:Dev.Team’s next game was Last Hope: Pink Bullets.

After Last Hope: Pink Bullets NG:Dev.Team released Fast-Striker a horizontal sh’mup with 6 stages and 3 different ships. Comparatively Hucast has also announced a horizontal sh’mup with 5 stages and 3 different ships; Ghost Blade. However, we were a tad bit disappointed with the number of stages, to make up for the short length the developer revealed more gameplay modes such as Time Attack and Caravan Mode (2 and a half minute survival challenge). In order to quail any concerns Hucast shared in the reveal that another team would be developing Ghost Blade which we assumed meant that Rene Hellwig would be collaborating with another programmer instead of Robert Konrad (KTX Software).

Ghost Blade was formally revealed on Jan. 11th with a feature list and a box art. Pre-orders opened simultaneously, however, given the sparse information we did not cover the game. Gradually over the weeks, Hucast revealed screenshots and concept art for the stages, they even held a poll on their Facebook page asking fans to select the type of stages they’d like featured in the final game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFWS2TBKi4w

Finally, on April 24th, (roughly 2 days after Dux 1.5’s release), a trailer for Ghost Blade was shared on YouTube. The Concept art work for Ghost Blade was beautiful and the screenshots were graphically impressive; conversely the trailer reveal was not so great. The game in action looked like a nice blend of Fast-Striker and Neo XYX, with abundant bullets and actions taking place on screen however the background was almost completely static, and the little movement present looked rather awkward. That said, the trailer did start with a warning clearly indicating that the footage was pre-alpha and work in progress.

Surprisingly, the trailer ended with a Winter 2013 release date. Let’s be frank that was never going to happen. We unsuccessfully tried to pry a comment out of Rene Hellwig, hopefully the next time we hear about Ghost Blade it will be with a trailer showing footage from the final version and it will end with a concrete release date.

Little introduction is needed for Pier Solar, but we’ll provide you one anyways. It’s origins can be traced back to 2004, while we at the Dreamcast-Scene were busy petitioning Sega to continue publishing games for Dreamcast. MegaDrive emulation & homebrew community Eidolon’s Inn were busy working on Tavern RPG. The Tavern is the name of the community’s forum and the original game was supposed to have members of the forum as characters (similar to Wind & Water: Puzzle Battles which was a game about making a video game and featured the developers as in game characters) the original target platform for the game was Mega-CD.

Eventually the project evolved into an original RPG for MegaDrive, and after jumping over numerous obstacles and circumventing several road blocks, the newly formed WaterMelon Games triumphantly released Pier Solar on Dec 20. 2010. The game was a critical and commercial success selling out 3 print runs, usually before the cartridges were even pressed.

In November 2012, Water Melon decided to port Pier Solar to multiple platforms via KickStarter, but instead of being a simple port it was going to be an HD remake amalgamating pixels with polygons. Unlike Redux: Dark Matters Dreamcast was not the primary platform for Pier Solar instead it was part of the stretch goals. Water Melon’s target was 139,000$ and if the project reached 150,000$, they would port it to Dreamcast as a platform as well. By December 2012 Water Melon had raised 231,370$, ensuring a Dreamcast release along with a dozen other platforms. Pier Solar is the 2nd successfully crowd funded Dreamcast game.

The projected release date for the remake was originally December 2013. The community was fairly confident that Water Melon would be able to release Pier Solar game before the holidays, the Dreamcast version is postponed because WaterMelon wants to release the game simultaneously on all platforms.

As of press time Water Melon did not respond to our email to comment on missing the projected release date.

Leona’s Tricky Adventure is a clever puzzle adventure in a charming retro look. Explore a world of mystery and cutesy residents and recover a lost paradise by solving logic puzzles. With a story line created by the comic authors Musal M. & B. Samuel and the music of the brilliant composer Chris Huelsbeck, Tricky Adventure is a perfect treat for connoisseurs.

After the success of Redux: Dark Matters and Pier Solar on KickStarter, KTX Software decided to get in on the crowd funding action and presented Leona’s Tricky Adventure to the community. Unfortunately KTX pulled the plug on it 5 days before the deadline, mainly the game failed to pick up any momentum and had only raised £1,794 out of the targeted £35,000. Selling a Puzzle game is more difficult than selling a sh’mup, but how could Water Melon and Hucast raise more than double where as Leona couldn’t even attain 10%?

The answer can be found at KTX’s official website:

KTX Software Development is an international company whose self-developed products are sold worldwide. Besides the development of pure entertainment software KTX is engaged in research projects in collaboration with the Technical University of Darmstadt to develop concepts and technology for serious games with an office at the University. KTX holds development licenses from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, and relies on a unique development stack, developed in-house at KTX (Kt & Kha), which can directly target all relevant systems; HTML5, mobile systems (iPhone, iPad, Android, Nintendo DS) and even the current game consoles Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Welcome to our website!

I have never read a more corporal introduction to an indie studio. the stoic introduction was coupled with an extremely clinical website. After reading it I asked myself a question; “What attracts most people towards the indie scene?” Let’s look at some of the other developers Hucast introduces themselves simply as the one stop Dreamcast Indie Store, Senile Team is Proudly forgetting decades of video game history, Water Melon is the Magical Game Factory.

All developers mission statement is accompanied by a vibrant website that projects the developers passion. Also all of the aforementioned developers have a strong bond with the community. Indie developers are people like us only difference is they are perusing dreams that we couldn’t. Even if you don’t share their dreams, you can still relate to them Senile Team grew up playing Streets of Rage, their first game was Beats of Rag. Now that is a retro developer we want to rally behind, so it is little surprise that KTX Software failed to attract the audience they needed.

KTX Software did not cancel the game though, instead they opened pre-orders on TrickyLeona.com, those who pre-ordered the game were to automatically become beta testers as well. Although the game was announced for a release date of July 2013 the game was still beta testing until September and since then KTX has gone dark. We contacted a number of KTX’s clients and none of them could give us any details on beta testing. Apparently they were in the dark as well. We contacted KTX Software numerous time over and as of press time haven’t heard back from them.

We can only hope that this situation can be resolved in 2014, Leona did look fairly complete and ready for beta testing so we are quite bewildered by KTX’s lack of communication. To read more on Leona’s Tricky Adventure click Here, and it is best not to pre-order the game right now.

(Editor’s note: This is not the end of the year in review, so far we have only discussed the games that were targeted for a 2013 release date, join us next week as we take a look behind the scenes and finally round everything up with a conclusion).